Hard Nips will turn on the crowd at December 7 EP release party at Cake Shop
Cake Shop
152 Ludlow St.
Tuesday, December 7, $8, 9:30
www.cake-shop.com
www.myspace.com/hardhardnips
The Brooklyn-based quartet Hard Nips are not exactly making it easy for themselves. First off is their name, which is actually short for Hard Nippon Girls, as vocalist Yoko Sawai, bassist Gooch, guitarist Mariko, and drummer Emi all come from Japan. (Well, it could also be short for the cocktail called the hard nipple, or it might refer to the Nips hard sucking candy, or, well, maybe it’s just exactly what it appears to be.) Then they named their 2010 album I SHIT U NOT and included the song “Children of Satan,” ensuring that many people would be too nervous to Google them or listen to their music at work for fear that the IT department (or a suspicious spouse at home) would send out a devil-worshiping pornography alert. Or at the very least, they could be seen as just another gimmicky group using shock tactics to get noticed. Fortunately, however, it’s their exciting sound and groovy live performances that have had them playing everywhere from SXSW and CMJ to the beaches of the Miami Music Festival and the hallowed confines of the Great Hall at the Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln gave one of his most historic speeches. The cheeseburger-eating, beer-swizzling, hard-partying Hard Nips will be celebrating their new eponymously titled Mixpak ten-inch on Pearl Harbor Day (like we said, they don’t make it easy on themselves) with a release party at Cake Shop. The EP contains four tracks that show off their fun brand of postpunk heavy metal psychedelic power pop, kicking off with the anthemic “Release It,” followed by “SunStroke,” which features strong group harmonies. Bass and drums build to a hot guitar riff in the hard-rock haiku “Picture,” with Yoko confessing, “I broke a window / Broke into your house / I stole a picture / of you and me in love on the sand // I climbed a mountain / And I see your house / You look unhappy / I take a picture.” The disc concludes with the more experimental “Alligator.” You can also expect to hear such fine tunage as “Black Hole Rainbow,” “State of the Art,” and “Island Radio” at Cake Shop, where Juiceboxxx, Greatest Hits, and Jubilee are also on the bill. Let the double and triple entendres proceed….